Recursion

The act of a function calling itself, recursion is used to solve problems that contain smaller sub-problems. A recursive function can receive two inputs: a base case (ends recursion) or a recursive case (resumes recursion).

Examples

Recursive function calls itself until condition met

The following Python code defines a function that takes a number, prints it, and then calls itself again with the number's value -1. It keeps going until the number is equal to 0, in which case it stops.

def recurse(x):
   if x > 0:
       print(x)
       recurse(x - 1)

recurse(10)

The output will look like this:

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Recursion is limited by stack size

The following code defines a function that returns the maximum size of the call stack available in the JavaScript runtime in which the code is run.

const getMaxCallStackSize = (i) => {
  try {
    return getMaxCallStackSize(++i);
  } catch {
    return i;
  }
};

console.log(getMaxCallStackSize(0));

Common usage examples

const factorial = (n) => {
  if (n === 0) {
    return 1;
  } else {
    return n * factorial(n - 1);
  }
};
console.log(factorial(10));
// 3628800

const fibonacci = (n) => (n <= 2 ? 1 : fibonacci(n - 1) + fibonacci(n - 2));
console.log(fibonacci(10));
// 55

const reduce = (fn, acc, [cur, ...rest]) =>
  cur === undefined ? acc : reduce(fn, fn(acc, cur), rest);
console.log(reduce((a, b) => a + b, 0, [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]));
// 45